How is a newsroom actually structured?
Around desks and a daily cycle of meetings, with a clear chain of decision that determines what gets covered, how prominently and when — and the structure explains far more about output than individual journalists' preferences do.
The roles:
Editor, with overall responsibility for the publication, including legal and editorial risk.
Deputy and executive editors, running the operation day to day.
The news desk — the operational centre. News editors assign stories, decide what is worth covering and manage reporters, and this is where most decisions that shape the paper actually get made.
Section editors for business, sport, features, foreign and comment, each effectively running a small publication.
Reporters, general or specialist by beat.
Correspondents, based in a place or covering a subject.
Sub-editors, who check copy, cut it to length, write headlines and standfirsts, and catch errors. Headlines are usually not written by the reporter, which explains most complaints that a headline misrepresents an article.
The picture desk, commissioning and selecting images.
Production and layout, and for broadcast, producers, output editors and a gallery team.
Lawyers, consulted before anything legally risky.
The daily rhythm:
The morning conference, where section editors pitch what they have and the day's shape is agreed.
Assignment and reporting through the day.
Later conferences, revising as stories develop.
The evening decision on the front page or lead item.
Production deadlines, which are absolute in print and continuous online.
What the structure explains:
Why similar stories appear everywhere — the same wire copy, the same diary of scheduled events, and the same conference rhythm.
Why some stories vanish, having been assigned and then dropped when space or priority changed.
Why corrections take time, since they route through the same chain.
How digital changed it: continuous publication rather than a deadline, live blogs, audience data visible in the newsroom, and a smaller number of people doing more roles — with sub-editing in particular substantially reduced, which is visible in the error rate.